Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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  1. Wide Awake
    Reflecting the zeitgeist of the last decade, with children increasingly having to come to terms with the untimely deaths of parents and friends as a result of AIDS and other illnesses, Wide Awake tackles its issues with an admirably uncompromising honesty, though it suffers from being dramatically obvious. [16 Mar 1998, p.64]
    • Variety
  2. Fireworks
    This contemplative drama about a tough ex-cop tying up the loose ends of his life and taking his terminally ill wife on a farewell journey is pure poetry.
  3. The Man in the Iron Mask
    An unusually sober and serious-minded telling of Alexandre Dumas' classic tale, this handsome costumer is routinely made and comes up rather short in boisterous excitement.
  4. Funny Games
    The film is shocking and upsetting, but never truly gets under the skin the way this kind of material often can. Whatever reservations are prompted by Haneke's approach, his direction is controlled and edgy. [20 May 1997, p.52]
    • Variety
  5. U.S. Marshals
    Stuart Baird's new thriller is inferior to the Andrew Davis movie in every respect: script, acting, rhythm and even tech credits.
  6. Love and Death on Long Island
    This is arguably Hurt's best role in years, and he bites into it with relish, managing to seem both manipulative and vulnerable, dour and droll at the same time.
  7. The Big Lebowski
    Spiked with wonderfully funny sequences and some brilliantly original notions, The Big Lebowski, a pseudo-mystery thriller with a keen eye and ear for societal mores and modern figures of speech, nonetheless adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.
  8. Hush
    Unfortunately, almost everything about the film is so unbelievable and misjudged that only the most gullible audiences will feel any transporting thrill at the end other than from the movie finally being over.
  9. The Real Blonde
    Enjoyable, if sometimes scattered, comic exploration of the quest for integrity and depth in a world wowed by artifice and superficiality.
  10. Senseless
    Created as a comic vehicle for the lead actor, pic depends entirely too much on Wayans to carry the day, but at this point he is far more eager and willing than he is funny.
  11. Palmetto
    Surprises are reserved for the final half-hour, at which point the slow-paced Palmetto has long since fossilized as a routine exercise in ceiling-fan, sweaty-forehead noir-by-numbers.
  12. Dark City
    What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn't all that much fun.
  13. Dangerous Beauty
    While there’s much to admire in the film, both its setting and tone seem out of touch with prevailing tastes.
  14. The Wedding Singer
    Director Frank Coraci and scripter Tim Herlihy work in concert to maintain a quality of farce rooted in human comedy.
  15. Sphere
    An empty shell.
  16. The Replacement Killers
    This mechanical effort is studied rather than heartfelt and will disappoint aficionados and thwart potential fans.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Night Flier
    A creepy vampire tale that also offers some clever commentary on bloodthirsty tabloid journalists. While not the most memorable of King adaptations, it’s far from the worst of them.
  18. Blues Brothers 2000
    Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis take a bumpy trip down memory lane in "Blues Brothers 2000," a sluggishly paced, fitfully funny followup to their 1980 musical comedy extravaganza.
  19. Great Expectations
    Beautifully made production lacks the emotional depth and dramatic tension needed to command audience attention beyond the level of a talented curiosity.
  20. Fallen Angels
    Abetted by the piercing images of lenser Christopher Doyle, the picture has a vivid, nightmarish quality that's more inviting than repellent. But the filmmaker mutes the impact by repeatedly cutting away to other settings, as if he lacked confidence in the power of the moment.
  21. The Gingerbread Man
    There is a trumped-up quality to the action climaxes that is disappointingly perfunctory, and the story's final revelation is simultaneously far-fetched and unsurprising.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phantoms
    Pic's virtues all stem from taking its genre imperatives absolutely seriously rather than condescending to them or playing cute. Even venerable O'Toole resists what must have been an obvious temptation to wink at his role, and delivers a solid, enjoyable turn.
  23. Spice World
    The movie essentially mirrors the non-diva, down-to-earth personalities on which their act is based, and which include a sizable amount of self-parody.
  24. Hard Rain
    A waterlogged would-be thriller deep-sixed by its misguided notion of high concept. [12 January 1998, p. 63]
    • Variety
    • 16 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Half Baked
    A couple of hash brownies short of a satisfying cinematic picnic, with far too few comic highs during the bigscreen reefer party.
  26. Live Flesh
    Most of all, the satisfyingly cinematic screen adaptation puts motion and energy into a story that was mostly internalized from Victor's perspective in Rendell's book.
  27. Fallen
    As a high-concept mating of two familiar genres, the police story and the supernatural thriller, "Fallen," Gregory Hoblit's sophomore effort, is a movie that might frustrate aficionados of both genres, despite some strong elements.
  28. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
    Overall, Maddin’s first effort with seasoned performers is extremely promising, and he continues to grow as a visual craftsman. But he’s in need of better material to develop the unique film voice his past films promised.
  29. The Boxer
    Intelligently conceived and well- acted, this compact, straightforward drama about two ordinary people caught in the ongoing political crossfire packs enough punch to command audience interest, but won't light up critics or the B.O. to the extent achieved by the team's previous outings, "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father."
  30. Oscar and Lucinda
    Armstrong and Jones smoothly navigate the magical tale through numerous shocking twists and turns until they bring it to a most logical, emotionally satisfying conclusion.
  31. Afterglow
    Followers of Alan Rudolph's career will rejoice at his latest effort, Afterglow, an incredibly and incurably romantic comedy-drama that most perceptively dissects the delicate imbalances of two very modern but very different marriages.
  32. The Postman
    Although The Postman conveys a thoroughly imagined vision of a future society, its basic concerns are actually far from those of traditional sci-fi, as it quickly comes to feel more like a Western than anything else.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wag the Dog
    Glib cynicism isn't a tremendously appealing quality, but in Wag the Dog it at least has the benefit of comic precision and polished handling.
  34. Kundun
    Ultimately Kundun emerges as a movie that's hypnotic without being truly compelling, sensuously stunning but not illuminating.
  35. Jackie Brown
    Unquestionably too long, and lacking the snap and audaciousness of the pictures that made him the talk of the town, this narratively faithful but conceptually imaginative adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" nonetheless offers an abundance of pleasures, especially in the realm of characterization and atmosphere.
  36. Mr. Magoo
    By turns frenetic and flat-footed, Mr. Magoo is an uninspired live-action comedy.
  37. As Good as It Gets
    A sporadically funny romantic comedy with all the dramatic plausibility and tonal consistency of a TV variety show.
  38. Tomorrow Never Dies
    There is plenty of bang-bang but very little kiss-kiss in Tomorrow Never Dies, a solid but somewhat by-the-numbers entry in the James Bond cycle.
  39. Titanic
    A spectacular demonstration of what modern technology can contribute to dramatic storytelling.
  40. Mousehunt
    Mouse Hunt is the cat's meow. Blending the graceful slapstick of Laurel and Hardy with the mock-Gothic visuals of "The Adams Family," this often screamingly funny comedy about a resilient rodent has enough across-the-board appeal to click with audiences of all ages.
  41. The Apostle
    Beautifully detailed and deftly structured, every scene in The Apostle logically leads to the next one, each elaborating on the central theme of religious redemption.
  42. Deconstructing Harry
    A tremendous, stellar cast is mostly confined to minor roles, but all shine under Allen's assured direction.
  43. Scream 2
    Visceral, witty and appropriately redundant, the sequel has a winning commercial recipe that's certain to cook up excellent returns in all areas.
  44. Amistad
    Aiming to instruct as well as entertain --- and often struggling to reconcile these two divergent goals.
  45. Good Will Hunting
    This beautifully realized tale is always engaging and often quite touching.
  46. Alien: Resurrection
    As a series of action set pieces, the movie is frequently gripping and always highly watchable. However, when the movie strays into weirder territory --- where, one feels, Jeunet's heart really lies --- there's a growing feeling of inadequacy.
  47. Flubber
    Despite a couple of slow stretches along the way, director Mayfield does a generally fine job of integrating the eye-popping special effects with the simple but serviceable plot. The pace is just brisk enough to satisfy youngsters with short attention spans, and Williams is winning enough to keep audiences of all ages involved.
  48. Welcome to Sarajevo
    The film's persistent skimming from one vantage point to another, with no dominant dramatic line until midway through, will unsettle audiences expecting a more regular construction and something on which to hook their emotions over the long term.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sweet Hereafter
    Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan's most ambitious work to date, The Sweet Hereafter is a rich, complex meditation on the impact of a terrible tragedy on a small town.
  50. The Rainmaker
    As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.
  51. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    An outstanding lean film trapped in a fat film's body.
  52. Anastasia
    Lacks the special creative spark needed to lift it to an uncommon imaginative level.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
    Pic consists largely of choppily edited fight scenes (usually involving somersaults and back flips) combined with various computer graphic effects.
  54. The Jackal
    With its strong premise, a couple of fine performances and highly polished tooling, The Jackal scores as an involving high-tech thriller that occasionally hits peaks of pulsating excitement.
  55. Starship Troopers
    A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.
  56. The Wings of the Dove
    Visually the film impresses, with Eduardo Serra's widescreen camerawork evocatively capturing the streets and interiors of London and a rain-swept Venice. Pacing is crisp, with little time wasted on inessentials. Dialogue is often caustically witty, and the relations clearly delineated.
  57. Bean
    Atkinson, who is in almost every scene, boasts a full-on comic personality that on the cinema screen is a bit daunting at times, and it's an open question as to whether the Carrey crowd will go for this seriously eccentric Brit.
  58. Eve's Bayou
    Anchored by a strong cast, including Samuel L. Jackson (also credited as a producer), Lynn Whitfield and Diahann Carroll, this talented debut by a black female writer-director is a well-made, if also old-fashioned, multi-generational drama.
  59. Mad City
    In actuality, however, what unfolds onscreen is a simplistic and obvious expose about the manipulative power of the news media that by now is so familiar that its cynical perspective is not likely to upset or provoke anyone.
  60. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
    Undoubtedly the most wildly original and audacious documentary in this year's Sundance Film Festival, Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is an uncompromising chronicle of the flamboyant poet and performance artist who died in 1996.
  61. An American Werewolf in Paris
    An enjoyably trashy blend of impressive special effects, low-key refs to Landis's movie, and sudden moments of horror breaking the jokey tone.
  62. Happy Together
    Maverick director Wong Kar-wai manages to pour old wine into new jars with Happy Together, a fizzy chamber yarn about two gay Hong Kongers in Argentina that's as slim as a bamboo flute but is his most linear and mature work for some time.
  63. Gattaca
    Gattaca, New Zealander helmer Andrew Niccol's impressive feature debut, is an intelligent and timely sci-fi thriller that, with the exception of some illogical plot contrivances, is emotionally engaging almost up to the end.
  64. A Life Less Ordinary
    Part kooky romance, part screwball comedy, part quirky fantasy and part Roadrunner cartoon, this is a movie that has everything except an involving storyline and characters.
  65. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    A polished genre piece with superior fright elements.
  66. The Devil's Advocate
    A fairly entertaining supernatural potboiler that finally bubbles over with a nearly operatic sense of absurdity and excess.
  67. The Maker
    Acreditable mix of character study and thriller elements, Tim Hunter's The Maker skirts but manages to elude several current genre traps - particularly those cliches surrounding both angstful-teen dramas and hip neo-noirs.
  68. Gummo
    Gummo is personal, honest and raw, but it's also erratic, self-indulgent and full of ideas that are not fully explored. [8 Sept. 1997, p.80]
    • Variety
  69. Best Men
    At heart, Best Men is a modest picture that harks back in many ways to U.S. movies of the late ’60s and early ’70s in its unconventional attitudes and anti-establishment tone. Pacing never lingers, and, unlike in Guncrazy, there’s no narrative fat; at the same time, there isn’t much emotional residue either. In short, it’s simply a quality B movie.
  70. Telling Lies in America
    Unswervingly sincere and dramatic without surprise or revelation, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' longtime pet project may be personal, but it offers little to audiences that hasn't been served up in quantity in the past.
  71. Boogie Nights
    Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original.
  72. Seven Years in Tibet
    Despite some magnificent widescreen lensing, faultless ethnographic detail and a timely sympathy for the plight of the Tibetan people, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's true-life tale about a self-obsessed Austrian mountaineer who learns selflessness in the Himalayas too rarely delivers at a simple emotional level.
  73. Gang Related
    A good, complex story unravels in disappointingly over-the-top fashion in "Gang Related." Premise, about two homicide cops caught in a trap of their own making, is a grabber that sustains interest for quite a while, and pic's exploration of the gray area where law enforcement and criminality overlap is intriguingly developed.
  74. Kiss the Girls
    Replete with smart, capable characters and crimes so bizarre that they lend the film a suspiciously lurid nature, this tony suspenser is hampered by the presence of a villain who is all too obvious from the very beginning.
  75. U Turn
    The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.
  76. The Ice Storm
    A well-observed and deftly performed examination of upper-middle-class emotional deep freeze, The Ice Storm is an intelligent, adult American film.
  77. The Peacemaker
    An uncommonly dour and even grim action thriller that globetrots as diversely as a James Bond film but offers a very limited view politically, emotionally and dramatically.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Soul Food
    Soul Food serves up family melodrama-cum-comedy that's tasty and satisfying, if not particularly profound or original.
  79. The Edge
    Although thin character motivation and some far-fetched plotting strain credulity in the late going, for the most part The Edge is a tense, visceral battle-of-wits thriller played out against a spectacular wilderness background.
  80. L.A. Confidential
    An irresistible treat with enough narrative twists and memorable characters for a half-dozen films.
  81. In & Out
    Aside from Dillon, who brightens every scene he's in, the delightful surprise here is Selleck, who brings wonderfully mischievous, energizing and self-deprecating qualities to the role of the dirt-digging but ultimately on-the-level broadcaster.
  82. Nenette and Boni
    Claire Denis comes up with her emotionally richest pic to date in Nenette and Boni, a multilayered look at unformed teen emotions and the mysterious, almost invisible ties that bind siblings.
  83. Going All the Way
    Given that the story’s trajectory isn’t very surprising, it’s up to the character details and local color to imbue it with life, and in this the film largely succeeds.
  84. The Myth of Fingerprints
    Proficiently written and directed by newcomer Bart Freundlich, handsome pic brandishes traditional qualities in the areas of acting, character revelation and middlebrow seriousness, but operates within a familiar and narrow emotional range that provides little surprise or excitement.
  85. The Game
    The film itself is limited by the material's nature as a brainy exercise and by its narrow focus; individual response will depend upon how tantalized one is by puzzles and games, as well as upon how off-putting one finds the central character, who is center-stage throughout.
  86. A Self-Made Hero
    This sure-footed, deeply ironic comedy about an impostor who rises through the ranks is rock-solid entertainment with an appealing edge.
  87. Fire Down Below
    Typical action fare for martial arts star Steven Seagal and, in his limited oeuvre, one of the more entertaining efforts. But the genre is pedestrian, and Seagal makes no new moves here in terms of screen personality or acting skill. What fun there is lies in the villains, some nifty stunts and a bouncy musical score rife with regional sounds.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Excess Baggage
    Director Marco Brambilla does a serviceable job, without adding much distinction to the piece, and the script --- credited to Max D. Adams, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais --- seems patched together, consisting of a series of scenes lacking a strong narrative hook.
  89. She's So Lovely
    Writer John Cassavetes wants to show that there’s nothing like the purity of first love, but he doesn’t provide his triangle sufficient psychological motivation to ground their otherwise erratic behavior. The script feels incomplete, and is further marred by a missing third act and a lack of discernible point of view.
  90. Hoodlum
    Director Bill Duke renders the period saga with passion, but lacks the sort of fluid, organic style the material requires; the film falls short of its aim for mythic proportion. Still, there's a vibrancy that's engrossing, if uneven.
  91. G.I. Jane
    A very entertaining get-tough fantasy with political and feminist underpinnings.
  92. Mimic
    Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fire
    The third feature from this Indian-born writer-director... is an underwhelming effort that adds little new to the debate over arranged marriages and fails to ignite much interest in the problems faced by two frustrated New Delhi wives.
  94. Leave It to Beaver
    Fuzzily conceived and blandly executed, Leave It to Beaver is neither fish nor fowl. Not exactly a straight-faced homage to the classic TV series, but far short of an outright parody, this exceedingly mild comedy plays like the product of a committee that never reached a consensus on which direction to take.
  95. Cop Land
    The increasingly broad strokes with which the story is painted serve to simplify rather than deepen it, and to make it seem more artificially constructed than need be.
  96. Event Horizon
    Despite game efforts from a first-rate cast and acres of impressive production values, Event Horizon remains a muddled and curiously uninvolving sci-fi horror show.
  97. The Delta
    Sachs commits a major error by deciding to center on Lincoln’s character, for John is a far more interesting, complex and disturbing personality.
  98. Steel
    Writer-director Kenneth Johnson provides a tinny story and a leaden pace for his tarnished titan. There’s a coziness and simplicity to the production that would be better served on TV. Cinema-size, it comes off as corny, antiquated and slightly cheesy.
  99. The Full Monty
    Bright and sassy, The Full Monty is a treat.
  100. Conspiracy Theory
    A below-par star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Conspiracy Theory is a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing.
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